The Magnificent Elmer Read online

  The Magnificent Elmer

  My Life with Elmer Bernstein

  Pearl Bernstein Gardner

  Gerald Gardner

  Copyright

  The Magnificent Elmer: My Life with Elmer Bernstein

  Copyright © 2014 by Pearl Bernstein Gardner and Gerald Gardner

  Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition © 2014 by RosettaBooks LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover design by Carly Schnur

  ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795341861

  Pearl and Elmer with their son Peter and dog Hamlet in their Hollywood Hills home, 1952

  To many this may sound like a cautionary tale.

  Let me tell you something.

  I wouldn’t have missed a day of it.

  —Pearl Bernstein Gardner

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: The Door Opens

  Chapter Two: Rise and Fall

  Chapter Three: The De Millennium

  Chapter Four: Eine Kleine Moses Musik

  Chapter Five: The Big O

  Chapter Six: Atticus

  Chapter Seven: The Magnificent Elmer

  Chapter Eight: “That David Copperfield Kind of Crap”

  Chapter Nine: Things Change

  Chapter Ten: Hollywood Be Thy Name

  Chapter Eleven: To Russia with Love

  Chapter Twelve: Next Year in Jerusalem

  Chapter Thirteen: Odets, Where Is Thy Sting?

  Chapter Fourteen: Sweet Smell of Hollywood

  Chapter Fifteen: Art Isn’t Easy

  Chapter Sixteen: Thoroughly Modern Elmer

  Chapter Seventeen: Fine and Danny

  Chapter Eighteen: Ole Blue Eyes

  Chapter Nineteen: Comedy Tonight

  Chapter Twenty: The Maestros

  Chapter Twenty-One: Bernstein’s Complaint

  Chapter Twenty-Two: “Her or Me”

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Score One for Me

  Chapter Twenty-Four: I’m Still Here

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Tribute

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Why Is This Woman Laughing?

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Appendix: The Elmer Oeuvre

  Photos of Elmer and the Family

  Elmer’s Tunes

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DOOR OPENS

  “Don’t ever change!

  This is how an artist should live.”

  —Sidney Buchman

  Elmer and I met at a Berkshire summer camp where he was the resident young genius and I was a struggling waitress from Philadelphia. Every Wednesday evening, Elmer would play a concert of classical music in the recreation hall. He was brilliant. The waitresses would squat in an adoring semi-circle on the floor, as the dark-haired young pianist confronted the keyboard. One evening, before he began the recital, Elmer stood and faced the audience.

  “I want to dedicate this performance of The Appassionata to Pearl.”

  “That’s me!” I thought acutely.

  My fellow waitresses stared at me in awe, wondering how they had failed to notice this simmering love affair. I was puzzled as there was no simmering affair for them to notice. I turned beet red and tried to disappear between the floorboards. Beethoven and Bernstein—what an aphrodisiac.

  I guess it is too easy to look down the hallways of one’s life and to say with any assurance, this is how it all started—this is how the door swung open—but that moment when the brash, handsome pianist said, “This is for Pearl,” that was surely the way it all began.

  In the days that followed, we became an item. There was a fresh spring in my step as I carried eight bowls of onion soup through the swinging doors of the kitchen. “Coming through!” I would squeal. And when the guests at my table were finished eating, Elmer cleared the plates. The most overqualified busboy in the Berkshires.

  When we returned from camp, I met Elmer’s parents and he met mine. Six months later we were married and living in our little flat in old Manhattan. The first floor of the building was occupied by the Ship Ahoy Bar. Our apartment was on the fifth floor with no elevator. By the fourth floor, a dozen oranges felt like five dozen. The living room was the largest of the three rooms and was dominated by a Steinway grand piano. The room was about 200 square feet with barely space for all 88 keys. Orange crates contained books and record albums, and a cot doubled as a sofa when we threw a blanket over it. Out the window was Broadway, and across the avenue was a Chinese restaurant where you could get two meals for a dollar-fifty. Street noises sounded like Bradley tanks. But the sounds I remember best were composed by Bartok and Chopin.

  My life with Elmer was topsy-turvy. We slept till noon, arose and did our household chores. Then Elmer would practice on the piano for a couple of hours for an upcoming concert. Listening to his music come flooding through the apartment was like standing under a waterfall on a very hot day.

  I would teach students in their first and second years, Elmer would teach them from the third-year up. Like most Jewish girls of that era I had had the obligatory piano lessons. So I was able to teach groups of five-year-olds the essence of melody and tempo. Elmer’s students had greater gifts and grander goals. We were a great tandem team, Elmer and I, and together we generated a modest income that managed to keep the wolves at bay.

  Many of our evenings were spent at concerts given by young pianists who were just coming on the scene, their eyes sparkling with hope, as indeed were Elmer’s. Other evenings we would spend attending the second acts of Broadway plays whose tickets we couldn’t afford. For fifty cents we could come in after Intermission and see half a show from the second balcony. We knew all the songs from the second act of On the Town, with music by that other Bernstein guy.

  ***

  We were growing up together. We were a couple of kids. All we had was a little room, a crust of bread, a glass of wine. The summer heat, the shouts from the street. Squalor, love, music. Can you visualize it? Of course you can. It’s Gershwin, Porgy and Bess, Act Two.

  That was our life on the memorable day when my life turned from Marjorie Morningstar into The Way We Were. If a screenplay were to describe the action that morning, it would read: FADE UP on APARTMENT, THE COMPOSER sits at the piano playing Beethoven, THE YOUNG WIFE is in the kitchen slamming around pots. The phone RINGS.

  Elmer answered the call and engaged in a brief conversation. When he finished, he came into the kitchen.

  “Who was that?”

  “That was Millard Lampell.”

  Elmer had met Millard at a North Carolina army post during the Second World War. While Elmer was playing piano for the brass, Millard was writing scripts for an army radio network. After Millard left the service, he wrote a novel called Saturday’s Hero, about the exploitation of college athletes, and Columbia Pictures bought the screen rights. That’s when Elmer’s old army buddy phoned the struggling concert pianist.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “You know that book he wrote? He’s recommended to Columbia that I write the musical score for the movie.”

  “Would that be in Hollywood?”

  “I very much think so.”

  I was twenty-one. I had traveled from Philadelphia to New York and from the Fulton Fish Market to the Aquarium. To me, the United States resembled the Steinberg drawing that begins with Ninth Avenue and looks west across the Hudson River to Kansas and the Pacific.

  “Sidney Buchman, the head of production at C
olumbia Pictures, is coming to the apartment,” said Elmer.

  “This apartment?”

  “Unless you have some other one.”

  I caught my breath. “When is Mr. Buchman coming to the apartment?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Elmer—we can’t have him climb five flights of stairs. He may be old or handicapped.”

  Elmer shrugged aside Mr. Buchman’s possible infirmities. He looked around the apartment, trying to see it through the eyes of a Hollywood executive.

  “Elmer, we have no idea how to entertain a movie producer.”

  I had heard they did a lot of heavy drinking in Hollywood.

  “We should buy a bottle of liquor.”

  “Okay,” Elmer replied.

  But since neither of us drank, we had no idea what to buy. We had both heard people asking for Scotch in drawing room comedies. We decided to buy a bottle of Scotch.

  Then I recalled that my mother would always offer guests something to eat when they visited our home in Philadelphia.

  “We should buy some food,” I said. Elmer agreed.

  We settled on a cake.

  The next day I bought a bottle of Scotch and a chocolate cake.

  That evening at the appointed time, the doorbell rang and there he stood—Sidney Buchman, head of production at Columbia Pictures, Hollywood USA. Sidney Buchman had produced the successful movie The Jolson Story which had seemingly done the impossible—it enhanced the size of Al Jolson’s ego. Before that, as a contract writer at the studio, he had written the screenplays for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Now he was producing Columbia’s newest gem, Saturday’s Hero.

  I could hardly catch my breath. Sidney Buchman stood in our doorway. He was six feet tall, in Sevile Row tweeds, a yellow shirt, and the perfect tie to complete the ensemble. He had thrown over his shoulders a coat that looked like the purest camels hair. Only it turned out to be vicuna. It was a wondrous sight to behold. But I knew that that coat did not belong in that apartment.

  We invited him in. Sidney Buchman gave me his vicuna coat to hang up. But we did not have a hall closet in which to hang it. Our only closet was elsewhere in the apartment and was jammed tight with all our belongings.

  I took the coat into the bedroom, sat down at the bed, and stroked it.

  When I returned to the living room, Sidney Buchman was looking around the cramped little place. He looked like he was searching for something to despise the most. I feared the first words that would escape from his beautiful Hollywood mouth. Mr. Buchman looked out the window onto Broadway, then returned his attention to our shabby apartment. Suddenly he threw his arms out and said: “Don’t ever change!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Elmer said.

  “This is how an artist should live. You don’t want Hollywood or the money. It will spoil you. This place is glorious.”

  “Would you like a shot of Scotch and a piece of cake?” I asked.

  Sidney Buchman kept pacing the room, extolling the artist’s life.

  The producer refused any refreshment and never asked to listen to Elmer’s music. He was too enthralled by the glorious apartment. In fact, he never mentioned Millard’s movie or offered the job to Elmer. Then, donning his vicuna coat, he winked at Elmer and said, “Get yourself an agent.” With these pregnant words, our fairy godfather Sidney Buchman was out the door and descended the five flights of stairs to the street below.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RISE AND FALL

  “How would you like to buy a practically new eight millimeter camera?”

  —George Wilner, Elmer’s new agent

  Elmer lost no time in getting himself a Hollywood agent. “I got you top dollar,” said George Wilner. “Six thousand big ones—six weeks. Get out here by the end of August.” We packed some books from our orange crates—Schulberg, Bradbury, Kerouac—and some clothes from our jam-packed closet. We took ourselves to the Buick showroom on Lexington Avenue. We kicked a few tires and put down a minimum deposit of $150 on a $3,000 car. Then we locked the apartment, cast an uneasy glance at the drunks on the stairs above the Ship Ahoy Bar, and with love in our hearts and a song on our lips, we pointed the hood of our new green convertible toward California.

  ***

  When we arrived in Los Angeles after seven days on the road, we had seventy-five cents and the car. We were immediately confronted with an important decision. Would we spend the seventy-five cents on gas or on breakfast? We decided to put gas in the car. We drove to the producer’s office and told him our problem. He thought a moment and said, “It’s Friday and I can’t get to the bank. Would two-hundred handle you for the weekend?” That was five months rent in New York. Elmer said it would probably do. From the producer’s office, with seventy-five cents worth of gas in our tank and two hundred dollars in our jeans, we drove to the offices of George Wilner, Elmer’s new agent. In the waiting room there was an actual palm tree. I had never seen a palm tree, let alone in an office. George Wilner smiled and suggested we all go out to the Beverly Hills Tennis Club where he was a member. The sparkling swimming pool was surrounded by lounge chairs, many of them occupied by actual writers, actors, and directors. Everyone looked very healthy and solvent. With all these successful people, I wondered where tomorrow’s failures were going to come from.

  As we were leaving the club that afternoon to return to the apartment that Columbia Pictures had rented for us, Agent Wilner invited us to come to his Beverly Hills home for brunch that weekend. We arrived there Sunday morning prepared to be impressed, and we weren’t disappointed. Their living room was as spacious as the Grand Canyon and brimming with elegance, a symphony in gold and beige.

  We had barely settled onto a sofa when George Wilner said: “How would you like to buy a practically new eight-millimeter camera?”

  It seemed an odd question. Wilner knew we had no money to spend on a camera. Food was even a challenge. Before we could answer, he gestured toward the two club chairs that flanked the fireplace.

  “Would you be interested in a sofa and two chairs for next to nothing?”

  These curious offers continued to punctuate the morning until nearly everything in the house had been placed on sale. We never did get around to brunch.

  Next day we realized what had triggered this odd behavior. The year was 1950 and the subpoena servers of the House Un-American Activities Committee were out in force all over town. To escape their clutches, George Wilner and his family were preparing to leave the country. They were trying to rid themselves of all their possessions.

  ***

  Columbia had made arrangements for Elmer and me to stay in an apartment on Rossmore Avenue. The studio also rented a battered upright piano on which Elmer could compose the music for his football drama.

  Columbia Pictures was the skid row of Hollywood. Indeed most of the major movie studios were not in Hollywood at all—MGM was in Culver City, and Warners and Universal were in the San Fernando Valley. When Elmer and I reported to Columbia’s sprawling music stage, we found Morris Stoloff, director of the studio’s music department, on the podium facing the large Columbia Studio orchestra. The motion picture Saturday’s Hero would be projected on a screen, and an orchestra of eighty musicians would play the music cues that Elmer had written on the upright piano in our apartment. When Stoloff brought his baton down and the music poured forth, well, what can I say? Elmer’s music was romantic, melodramatic, fantastical, colorful, comic, tragic, melodic!

  Harry Cohn was head of Columbia. Cohn’s combative nature was such that when doctors found a tumor in his alimentary canal, many were disappointed when it proved to be benign. After the surgery, Herman Mankiewitz said, “What a pity—to remove the one part of Harry Cohn that is not malignant.”

  His corrosive reputation notwithstanding, I always had the utmost respect for Harry Cohn’s creative instincts. Midway through the music session for Saturday’s Hero, a Columbia executive crossed the sound stage, bent over Elmer, and whispered somethi
ng urgently in his ear. Elmer shook his head a decisive no and the man retreated.

  “What was that about?” I said.

  “Harry Cohn likes what he’s hearing about my music. His man just offered me a contract as a staff composer at twenty-five thousand a year. What do you think?”

  Our income in New York was three thousand a year. Hollywood offered year-round sunshine, oranges, and you could make right turns on the red signal. There was only one intelligent response to such an offer.

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Elmer said.

  Elmer prized his independence. He did not want to surrender his right to say no. He did not want a job where he was required to score whatever lousy movie showed up on the schedule. Tarzan’s New York Adventure. Andy Hardy Goes to Prison.

  Hence, the next day we were back in our apartment on Rossmore Avenue, making plans to return the rented piano, and gas up the car for our return to New York.

  That’s when the phone rang. It was an agent at George Wilner’s office. Columbia business affairs had phoned. Would Elmer be willing to write the music for a new racetrack movie that starred William Holden, one of the studio’s up-and-coming stars? And after that, would Elmer be available to score the new Roz Russell movie?

  “Better keep the piano,” Elmer said.

  ***

  Elmer’s career in movie music was on the rise. Hard on the heels of Saturday’s Hero came Boots Malone, Never Wave at a WAC, The Eternal Sea, Dieppe Raid, Make Haste to Live, and Sudden Fear. But Elmer’s fecundity was not confined to the piano. All during our walkup years, we had been trying to add to the baby boom, but to no avail. Then suddenly Peter arrived… and then Gregory. “By God,” said Elmer, “this place really does make things grow—not just avocadoes and casabas.”

  But the sunny weather had a way of attracting more than storks. All those glittering movie stars tended to attract the attention of congressmen driven by ambition unmarred by conscience. It was proving a good season for blacklisting and witch-hunting. The Red Scare was at its most intense, as our furniture-shedding agent demonstrated.